Native Ontological Framework Guides Causal Reasoning: Evidence from Wichi People

Abstract

Causal cognition - how we perceive, represent and reason about causal events - arefundamental to the human mind, but it has rarely been approached in its culturalspecificity. Here, we investigate this core concept among Wichi people, an indigenousgroup living in Chaco Forest. We focus on the Wichi, because their epistemologicalorientations and explanatory frameworks about ecosystem differ importantly from thosedocumented among most Western majority-culture populations. We asked participantsto reason about causes of events that involve the hunhat lheley (inhabitants of the earth:humans, non-human animals, plants and spiritual beings) and other entities of theirecosystem (e.g., lagoon). We find a native ontological framework that encompassesthree interacting organizing principles. This new evidence highlights ways in whichnative categories guide causal reasoning. Our research challenge long-held assumptionsthat dichotomies - nature-culture or natural-supernatural - are universal features of thehuman mind.